N.J. appeals court rejects South Plainfield man's efforts to win trial for the 2002 murder of his uncle

Jonathan Moorman, right, at a 2004 court hearing. An appeals court has rejected his efforts to overturn his guilty plea to his uncle's murder in 2002.File photo

SOUTH PLAINFIELD — An appeals court panel has rejected the latest efforts of a South Plainfield man to overturn his guilty plea in 2004 to the murder of his uncle two years earlier in South Plainfield.

The two-judge panel affirmed a judge’s 2011 decision to reject Jonathan Moorman’s petition for post-conviction relief, which, if granted, could have resulted in a trial for robbing and strangling Roger Cassett, 59, a Plainfield wrestling coach, on April 1, 2002.

The 17-page decision released Tuesday said Moorman, now 31, who has since changed his name to Auel Martinez, pleaded guilty in January 2004 to murder, kidnapping and attempted burglary, but several months later, he made a motion to rescind the guilty plea. The motion was denied in July 2004 by Superior Court Judge James Mulvihill, now retired, in New Brunswick and Moorman was sentenced to 47 years in prison and ordered to serve 85 percent of it before he is eligible for parole.

In his 2009 petition for post-conviction relief, he argued that it was the incompetence of his defense attorney that led to his guilty plea. Instead of going to trial and pleading diminished capacity because he said he was sexually molested by Cassett when he was a child, he took a plea, the decision said.

During the 2011 hearing, the attorney, James Wronko, testified that he could find no corroboration for Moorman’s allegations and was fearful that the jury would not believe it. If Moorman was convicted of all the charges against him, including a felony murder charge, he could have received the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

“We find no constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel,” for not using the sexual molestation as a defense, the judges said in the decision. “The alleged sexual molestation, assuming it took place, did not negate any elements of the offenses to which (Moorman) pled. The factual basis given by (Moorman) would have been sufficient with or without it.”

Moorman admitted to police when he was arrested that he went to Cassett’s home in South Plainfield to steal money and other items. He said he was allowed into the home by Cassett, but soon attacked the man, tying him to a chair and wrapping an electrical chord around his neck. During the attack, Cassett’s stepfather came in and he tied the stepfather’s hands and feet so he couldn’t move. Then he said he tightened the chord around Cassett’s neck until he died.

In his 2004 denial of Moorman’s efforts to rescind his guilty plea, Mulvihill noted that psychiatric evaluations determined Moorman was feigning signs of mental illness, according to earlier accounts. The judge also noted the defendant wrote letters to his girlfriend, boasting that he was a “con man” who would be able to walk out of court after convincing authorities he was insane at the time of the slaying.